"Katherine Hoover is an extraordinary composer. She has a wide and fascinating vocabulary which she uses with enormous skill. Her music is fresh and individual. It is dazzlingly crafted, and will reach an audience as it provides interest to the professional musician. I do not know why her works are not yet being played by the major institutions of this country, but I am sure that she will attain the status she deserves in time. She is just too good not to be recognized, and I predict that her time will come soon."
- John Corigliano
Katherine Hoover was born in West Virginia and resides in New York, where she maintains an active career as composer, conductor, and flutist. She is the recipient of a National Endowment Composer's Fellowship and many other awards, including an Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award in Composition. Five of her pieces have won the National Flute Association's Newly Published Music Competition. Her solo work "Kokopeli" has sold over 8000 copies. Her works are published by Theodore Presser, Carl Fischer, and Papagena Press. CD's of her music have been issued on Koch, Delos, Parnassus, Gasparo, Summit, , Cantilena, Bayer, Boston and Leonarda.
Ms. Hoover's tone poem Eleni: A Greek Tragedy, has been performed by thirteen orchestras, including the Harrisburg and Fort Worth Symphonies. Stitch-te Naku, for Cello and Orchestra, written for Sharon Robinson, was presented by the Long Beach, CA and Santa Monica Orchestras, the Womens Philharmonic, and Orchestra Sonoma. Her Clarinet Concerto, written for jazz virtuoso Eddie Daniels, was premiered with the Santa Fe Symphony. In January, 1994, Ms. Hoover conducted the premiere of her Night Skies, a 25-minute work for large orchestra, with the Harrisburg Symphony.
The Colorado and Montclaire Quartets, Dorian, Sylvan and Richards Quintets, and the Eroica Trio have featured her work. In 1989 the New Jersey Chamber Music Society premiered her Quintet (Da Pacem) for piano and strings at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. Pianists Joseph Kalichstein, Anne Marie McDermott, Christopher Taylor, and Mirian Conti have performed her work. Flutists Julius Baker, Eugenia Zukerman, Jeffrey Khaner, Mimi Stillman, Carol Wincenc, and Metropolitan Opera bass John Cheek have also presented her pieces.
Ms. Hoover attended the Eastman School of Music and holds a Masters in Music Theory from the Manhattan School, where she taught for years. Her main flute study was with Joseph Mariano and William Kincaid; she has given concerto performances at Lincoln Center and performed with ballet and opera companies in New York's major halls, as well as recording solo and chamber repertoire.
Ms. Hoover has also attended the Conductors Institute and has led performances in Wisconsin, West Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania. The commissioning, rehearsing, and premiere of her Dances and Variations at Kennedy Center are the subject of an Emmy-winning documentary, called New Music, by Deborah Novak.
Classical Pulse, Jan. 1997: Critic Leslie Gerber picked Hoover's Quintet (Da Pacem) as one of the five best recordings of 1996.
In November of 2002 Ms. Hoover's Requiem: A Service of Remembrance 1865/2001 for chorus, soloists, speakers, brass. Percussion, and organ, with poetry by Walt Whitman, was premiered at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York City.